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Wednesday, 12 November 2008

Philmont Journal

Philmont Journal Day 5October 22, 2008

Had a sleep in day to between 8:30 and 9:00. Woke up to a snow storm which started last night during the early morning hours. In my mind before a went to bed I thought I saw a slight mist which lead me to believe that it was possible to have a snow accumulation. I never brought this up to me tent mate or the rest of the group because I was not positive but had a good feeling that it could happen. Since the wind was blowing strong and snow was coming down we were invited into the cabin and in the end we ended up using the cabin the rest of the week. My knee which I injured yesterday by irritating/pulling a ligament is still hurting but I decide to go on the hike today. The goall of today's hike is to summit bontio Peak which has a elevation of 10610 feet. By the way the approximately elevation of the base camp which is Beaubien is about 9400 feet. We ended up leaving base camp around 11:30 during which is was still slightly snowing. As we move further up the mountain the wind and snow became worse until we reached the top of the peak. Once we reached the top of the peak the fog cleared up and we had a awesome view of the surrounding area and the valley below. Also the snow and wind subsided and then stopped for our hike back to camp. After we got back to camp we spent a couple of hours warming up and just having some freetime. After freetime we had to start our service project for the 50 miler patch. which requires 3 hours of community service. The service project we had to do was to gather and straighten the wood piles surrounding beabuien. Today we did about 1.5 of our 3 required hours. After that we had a nice fire inside and stayed inside most of the evening because the wind and snow picked up again during the service project.

Route

Took trail north out of beaubien to Beaubien Access Road Junction where we followed the road in a north-easterly direction until we reached bonito Peak Trail. This trail actually continues down the other side of the mountain and ends up going north to various other campsites and back south to porcupine camp. In order to do just the mininum required in order to get the 50 mile patch we went up and down the same side of the peak, which ended up being about 8 miles.

Went up Bonito Peak Trail to top of peak

Came down the same side of the peak that we came up on Bonito peak Trail.

From Bonito Peak Trail we to the Beabuien Access Road to the Junction.